Welcome back to Working Overtime, the West Side Story of Practical Advice to regular workings, Romeo and Juliet, which on reflection might not be an apt comparison, but Isaac will tell me one day. I'm June Thomas.

Forsooth, I am Isaac Butler. Isaac, I haven't seen you in, well, ages. What have you been up to? What have I been up to? Getting towards the

end of the semester. So about to have a bunch of papers that I got a grade. I've been, you know,

doing some Thanksgiving stuff, things of that nature.

Now we're sliding into Christmas. Going to see Phantom of the Opera this weekend, you know. Oh, my goodness. Take that last chance. All right. Take that last time. Well, my daughter's never seen it. And it was the first Broadway musical I ever saw. So, you know, there you go. What about you, June? How are you?

I am swell, thank you.

Oh, well, great. And what are we talking about today?

So we are taping this episode in... So, you know, there you go. What about you, June? How are you? I am swell. Thank you.

Oh, well, great. And what are we talking about today? So we are taping this episode in December, and it will air in December, but nevertheless, we're going to talk about nanorimo, which is National Novel Writing Month,

which officially kind of happens in November. But I didn't want to talk about it then

because all the nanorrimos were heads down on their novels. However, during that month,

Slate published a really fun piece about that fine institution, and I loved it so much. I wanted to invite the author,

Vanessa Zoltan, to join us to talk about it. And she said yes. Yes, let's get right to it.

Vanessa, welcome to working overtime. Thank you for having me. So let's start with a couple of basic questions.

How is Nanorimo supposed to work?

How many times have you attempted it?

And have you always won, which I'm also going to need you to define?

The most important thing that I am going to say today is the following, which is I have no official affiliation with NanaRimo.

No one has threatened to sue me for this, but I just want to make sure that that is abundantly clear.

So NanaRimo is a commitment for a group of people.

You don't have to sign your name in blood or anything.

You just sort of decide to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month,

...